This disclosure relates to the field of data processing, systems. More particularly, this disclosure relates to data processing systems including a descriptor ring for storing pointers to memory locations.
It is known to provide data processing systems which incorporate a descriptor ring to store pointers to memory locations. One use of such descriptor rings is within systems including one or more general purpose programmable processors which store pointer data within the descriptor ring such that the pointer data can be read by one or more devices from the descriptor ring and used to identify areas of buffer memory to be used by the one or more devices. The memory addressing associated with such systems may require address translation in dependence on address translation data so that a memory access by the one or more devices using the pointer from the ring descriptor can be performed. The translation data may be determined using a mechanism such as page table walking which requires a relatively large number of processing cycles to he performed, and accordingly introduces delay upon at least the first use of a pointer read from the descriptor ring.